TrueLife - Spotlight on Marshall McLuhan #5: Media, Society & the Global Brain

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Heiress through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:49 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. I am hopeful, my friend, that all of you fall like rays of sunshine through a series of openings inside a cave so that the darkness can be punctuated with beams of light.

Starting point is 00:01:33 Well, well, well. You made it to the end of the week. You know what I think? I think you deserve something special. Something real nice. So whatever it is, I want you to go get it for yourself. Just go ahead, just do it. If you feel like you deserve it, go out and get it.

Starting point is 00:01:53 Just do it. And if you feel like picking up something nice for me, hey, who am I to argue with you and your judgment and your ideas about rewarding me for, you know, this awesome podcast? Who am I to get in the way of that? Well, know this. I love you. Happy you're here. Happy, it's Friday. And I'm looking forward to a good weekend.

Starting point is 00:02:20 I'm looking forward to reading some more of your guys' comments. I'm looking forward to reading some more of your ladies' comments. I'm just thankful to be here. I wish I could give you a hug. Is that weird? So what are you thinking so far about Mr. Marshall McLuhan? I don't know about you, but I need a shovel because I'm digging it.

Starting point is 00:02:50 I'm loving it. Does that make you think of McDonald's? see this is getting us right back to where we started these little idiosyncrasies these little ba-dam bum-pum or remember this one what was the one um bah dunna by menin remember in that show seinfeld where he was like custanza so you can piggyback these little audio oddities and you can piggyback these little memes that are already out there and just they're like a little virus that you put your own DNA into and then you can use that successful virus to penetrate the minds of the people around you get them to think things get them to do things and that's that's that's quite a bit about what

Starting point is 00:03:45 we've been talking about with some of marshal mcclund's ideas in fact that's part of the reason why we are in Marshall McLuhan's eyes, devolving into a more archaic society. It's fascinating to me because we've covered Terence McKenna, we've covered Joseph Campbell, and now we're covering Marshall McLuhan,

Starting point is 00:04:08 and there's this odd thread, this eriodony thread to help us through the maze, if you will. You know, I think it was Terence McKinna who talked about an archaic revival, about returning to some parts of the archaic, returning ourselves to some systems of thought that may lead us out of this bind.

Starting point is 00:04:45 And of course, it was Joseph Campbell who spoke to us about the power of myth. And here we have Marshall McLuhan forecasting kind of what Terrence McKinnon was talking about. It's interesting to me to think about why Marshall McLuhan thought this and how he was able to predict this so long ago. And then being able to see how some of the social media companies

Starting point is 00:05:23 and the internet companies, I think there's a new documentary out on Netflix that talks about how social media is in fact changing our behavior. I forgot the name of it. However, it's pretty widespread right now, and it talks a lot about what Marshall McLuhan is talking about now.

Starting point is 00:05:47 So what do you say? We pick up where we left off and keep on trucking. So we were talking about the left and right hemispheres of the brain. We left off with, I think the last sentence was the present electronic age in its inescapable confrontation with simultaneously presents the first serious threat to the 2,500 year dominance of the left hemisphere. There are a variety of factors which can give salience or mastery either to the right, simultaneous and acoustic hemisphere of the bruce. of the brain or to the left

Starting point is 00:06:35 lineal and visual hemisphere no matter how extreme the dominance of either hemisphere in a particular culture there was always some degree of interplay between the hemispheres thanks to the corpus callosum and the anterior and hippocampal commissures that part of the neural cable network

Starting point is 00:06:57 which bridges the hemispheres even the Chinese with their extreme cultivation of the right hemisphere, which invests every aspect of their lives, their language, their writing with artistic delicacy, exert much left hemisphere bias and quality in their practicality and concern with moral wisdom. However, their stress falls heavily on what Heisenberg calls the resonant interval or touch. It is a matter of the experience of time and space.

Starting point is 00:07:38 A Westerner, for example, arranges flowers in space. The Chinese and the Japanese harmonize the space between the flowers. The importance of this discontinuous space becomes clear in the following passage from the Chinese eye by Chiang Yi. Indeed, the use of space is one of the Chinese. painters most coveted secrets, one of the first thoughts in his head when he begins to plan his composition. Almost every space in our pictures has a significance. The onlooker may fill them up with his own imagined scenery or with feeling merely. There was a Chinese poet of the Song Dynasty, Ye Ching Chen, who wrote The Sorrows of a Parting.

Starting point is 00:08:32 and describe the scene as follows. Of the three parts, spring. Scene two are sadness, and the other part is nothing but wind and rain. The Chinese, in other words, allow the right hemisphere to direct the left. They use the eye as an ear, creating the seemingly paradoxal situation

Starting point is 00:08:59 that Tony Schwartz notes in the responsive chord apropos the TV image in watching television our eyes function like our ears

Starting point is 00:09:12 the experience of the right brain leading the left is by no means foreign to us Herbert Krugman performed brainwave studies comparing the response of subjects to print and television one subject was reading a book

Starting point is 00:09:28 as the TV came on As soon as she looked up, her brainwaves slowed significantly. She was in a predominantly alpha state, relaxed, passive, unfocused. Her brainwave response to three different types of TV content was basically the same. Even though she told Krugman, she liked one, disliked another, and was bored by a third. As a result of a series of such experiments, Krugman argues that this essential alpha state is characteristic of how people respond to TV. Any TV, he remarked.

Starting point is 00:10:15 Let me pause for a minute. So as this woman is reading a book, she looks up. And in a matter of seconds, her brain wave response was slowed significantly. Think about that. Within just a few seconds, you are put into a relaxed, passive, and unfocused position. What better way to have a message seep into your thoughts? Or what better way to program somebody than to have them be in this particular almost vegetative slash meditative state?

Starting point is 00:11:03 You've got mail. Krugman remarked, the ability of respondents to show high right brain response to even familiar logos, their right brain response to stories, even before the idea content has been added to them, the predominantly right brain response to TV, and even perhaps to what we call print advertising. This all suggests that in contrast to teaching, the unique power of the electronic media is to shape the content. of people's imagery and in that particular way determine their behavior

Starting point is 00:11:42 and their views Krugman's investigations were he admitted initially undertaken to disprove the medium is the message his quantitative results point to a massive and subliminal

Starting point is 00:12:00 erosion of our culture through right hemisphere indoctrination by TV in a wider sense all electronic media as a new configuration or ground gives salience only to the right hemisphere. There is no way of quantifying the right hemisphere, which emphasizes inner and qualitative aspects of experience. The current spate of dyslexia and other learning disability difficulties, some 90% of the victims are male, may well be a direct result of TV and other electronic media pressuring us into returning to the right

Starting point is 00:12:37 hemisphere. Dislexia is an inability to adopt a single, fixed point of view with respect to all letters and words. Conversely, it consists of approaching letters and words from many points of view simultaneously, i.e. right brain fashion. Without the assumption that any one view is solely correct. So will problems with a left hemisphere alphabetic form. Is there a direct relationship between soaring delinquency rates in the U.S. and Canada and reading disability. The Cubists as artists and the antennae of the race detected the shift some 70 years ago and explored the emerging grammar of the right brain sensory modality. If literacy is to survive in the West, our writing system will soon have to be recast in a

Starting point is 00:13:37 mold congenial to write hemisphere sensibilities and satisfactions. It may be necessary, for example, to make a transition from stick and ball penmanship to italics from the Palmer method to a shortened form of calligraphy. In brief, every man, a cubist. We have long been accustomed to using the interval between the wheel and the axle as an example not only of touch, but also, of play. Without play, without that figure ground interval, there is neither wheel nor axle. The space between the wheel and the axle, which defines both is where the action is. And this space is both

Starting point is 00:14:23 audio and tactile. The Chinese, as we have said, used the interval between things as a primary means of getting in touch with situations. Nothing could be more expressive, than this interval of the properties of the right hemisphere in contrast to the left. For to the left brain, the interval is a space which must be logically connected, filled, and bridged. Such is the dictate of lineality and visual order in contrast to the resonating interval of, or gap, excuse me, Such is the dictate of lineality and visual order in contrast to the resonating interval or gap of the simultaneous world of the right hemisphere. In the book of tea, Okakura Kakuzzo explains the Japanese attitude to social relationships as a constant readjustment to our surroundings. This is the extreme contrast to the Western or visual point of view, which assumes a fixed position from which to examine each situation and to assert one's preference.

Starting point is 00:15:44 Right hemisphere culture has no place for the private individual, just as left hemisphere society regards tribal groups as sinister and threatening. E.g. the yellow peril World War II soldiers and sailors used to refer to natives. in the South Pacific. Suzuki, the great authority on Zen Buddhism, describes Mugga as ecstasy, with no sense of, I am doing it. Effortlessness.

Starting point is 00:16:19 The observing self is eliminated. A man loses himself, that is, he ceases to be a spectator of his acts. Suzuki says, with the awakening of consciousness. The will is split into two. Actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable.

Starting point is 00:16:42 For the actor, mine as self, wants to be free from the limitations of the observer self. Therefore, in enlightenment, the disciple discovers that there is no observer self. No soul entity as an unknown or knowable. quantity. Nothing remains but the goal and the act that accomplishes it. The right hemisphere culture has a great affinity for the simultaneity of the age of electronic information as Okakura Kakuzzo explains. The present is the moving infinity, the legitimate sphere of the relative. Relativity scene seeks adjustment adjustment is art the art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings the right hemisphere culture naturally seeks to tune or reconfigure intervals rather than to connect

Starting point is 00:17:47 situations and relationships the Taoists claimed that the comedy of life could be made more interesting if everyone would preserve the unities. To keep the proportion of things and give place to others without losing one's own position was the secret of success in the mundane drama. We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts. The conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual. This Laossee illustrates by his favorite metaphor of the vacuum. He claimed that only in the vacuum lay the truly essential. The reality of a room, for instance, was to be found in vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls,

Starting point is 00:18:47 not in the roof and walls themselves. the usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in the form of the pitcher or of the material of which it was made. Vacuum is all potent because it is all containing. In vacuum alone, motion becomes possible. One can see immediately how the concept of zero, must have struck the West when it was first introduced through Africa

Starting point is 00:19:26 to Europe in the Middle Ages. The Oriental idea suggested the possibility of play in mathematics and science, the absence of which tended to cripple the computations of the Romans and the Greeks. Kakuzo adds, in Jiu-Jitsu,

Starting point is 00:19:45 one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistant. vacuum. While conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle, in Western art, we admire the power of statement in the bounding line in design, whereas the right hemisphere culture gives play to the opposite principle instead of statement, the stress is on the value of suggestion.

Starting point is 00:20:16 In art, the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid, the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea, and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up to the full measure of your aesthetic emotion. This is of the same order as the preliterate Greek technique of Mimesis, discussed earlier. yet some of our most perceptive Western writers, particularly in the early part of the century, were so captured by the rigidity of a fixed point of view, of objectivity, that they failed to give equal time to the reconciliation of opposites.

Starting point is 00:21:11 They did not understand that oral cultures regard robotism as a desirable norm. In contrast, Windham Lewis in Men Without Art maintains that the role of the civilized artist is to prevent our becoming adjusted since to individualized Western society the well-adjusted man is an impercipient automation. The term robotism, therefore, as we use it,

Starting point is 00:21:45 does not mean the mechanically rigid behavior of Rosum's universal robots, as Carol Coppec used the word in his 1938 play. Rather, robotism in this context, means the suppression of the conscious, the suppression of the conscious observer self or conscience, so as to remove all fear and circumspection, all encumbrances to ideal performance. such a man as Suzuki says becomes as the dead who have passed beyond the necessity

Starting point is 00:22:23 of taking thought about the proper course of action the dead are no longer returning on they are free therefore to say I will live as one already dead means a supreme release from conflict

Starting point is 00:22:46 the Japanese use living as one already dead to mean that one lives on a plane of expertness. It is the extinction of the left hemisphere detached an objective self. If the result resembles detachment, it is from pushing the right hemisphere to the state of total enlargement or enhancement. To the point of reversal of apparent characteristics, as Ruth Benedict remarks, it is used in common everyday excoration. To encourage a boy who is worrying about his final exams from middle school, a man will say,

Starting point is 00:23:27 take them as one already dead and pass them easily. To encourage someone who is undertaking an important business deal, a friend will say, be as one already dead. When a man goes through a great soul crisis and cannot see his way ahead, he quite commonly emerges with the resolve to live as one already dead. continues. It points up vividly the difference between Western and Eastern psychology that when we speak of a consciousness American, we mean a man who no longer feels the sense of sin, which should accompany wrongdoing. However, in the Japanese sense, it is an equivalent phrase he means a man who is

Starting point is 00:24:14 no longer tense and hindered. The American means a bad man, the Japanese, the Japanese, the Japanese means a good man, a trained man, a man able to use his abilities to the utmost. He means a man who can perform the most difficult and devoted deeds of unselfishness. The great American sanction for good behavior is guilt. A man who becomes a callous conscious can no longer feel this has become antisocial. the Japanese culture diagram the problem differently according to their philosophy man in his inmost soul is good if his impulse can be directly embodied in his deed he acts virtuously and easily therefore he undergoes in expertness self-training to eliminate the self-censorship of shame only then is the sixth

Starting point is 00:25:17 sense free of hindrance. It is his supreme release from self-consciousness and conflict. You guys see the difference there? The paradox today is that the ground of the latest Western technologies is electronic and simultaneous and thus is structurally right hemisphere and oriental and oral in its nature and effects. The reason for this state of affairs is that most Western technology, retain often quite unnecessarily like the computer a mechanical one thing at a time basis as a form of 19th century cultural lag the situation began with the telegraph over a century ago the overwhelming pattern of procedures in the western world remains lineal sequential and connected in political and legal institutions also in education in commerce, but not

Starting point is 00:26:19 in entertainment or art. A formula for complete chaos. The ground of the Oriental Right Hemisphere World meantime is rapidly acquiring some of the hardware connectedness of the left hemisphere Western world. Before 1940, Japan began to

Starting point is 00:26:39 compete in the arena of modern industrialism in textiles, shipbuilding, etc. Today, it rivals American competence in the making of semiconductors and small autos. China has recently embarked on a program of mass alphabetic literacy, which will result in her acquiring a completely left hemisphere cultural bias, plunging the Chinese into a new phase of individualized enterprise and aggression,

Starting point is 00:27:09 for which they are already developing, once again, a ground of industrial hardware. as one Canadian observer who had been there in the 1980 with a Canadian symphony with a Canadian symphony orchestra says the Chinese are in the act of tearing their cultural skin off in order to protect themselves against Russian hardware I think it's important to note this book was written some time ago so if some of the references are dated you know why

Starting point is 00:27:42 In general, it needs to be noted that left hemisphere man has very little power to observe or control environments or to see the patterns of change. The Oriental tradition, on the other hand, reflects a particular attunement to all facets of ground and immediate responsiveness to changes in ground configuration. In the 1970s, the Japanese quickly perceived the developing public need, for small cars on a world scale. American carmakers were mesmerized by the car as object. The Japanese saw the car as ground as part of the serviced environment, which encompassed it. Oral peoples in Asia or the Third World are notoriously conservative

Starting point is 00:28:30 about new technologies because of their sensitivity to the side effects involved. The new ground they bring into play, and theirs are histories of rejections of innovations. Westerners, in contrast, tend to adopt anything that promises an immediate profit and to ignore all side effects.

Starting point is 00:28:52 It is this sensitivity to ground plus a strong sense of decorum and a lack of private identity that enables the Eastern culture to change behavior instantly from one pattern to another. For example, until August

Starting point is 00:29:13 1945, the Chu code of loyalty demanded of the Japanese people that they fight to the last man against the enemy. When the emperor changed the requirements of Chu by broadcasting Japan's capitulation, the Japanese outdid themselves in expressing their cooperation with their victors.

Starting point is 00:29:35 Occidentals cannot easily credit the ability of the Japanese to swing from one behavior to another without psychic cost. Such extreme possibilities are not included in our experience. Yet in Japanese life, the contradictions, as they seem to us, are as deeply based in their view of life as our uniformities are in ours. It is especially important for Occidental's to recognize that the circles into which the Japanese divide life do not include any circle of evil. This is not to say that the Japanese do not recognize bad behavior,

Starting point is 00:30:15 but they do not see human life as a stage on which forces of good contend with forces of evil. They see existence as a drama, which calls for careful balancing of the claims of one circle against another and of one course of procedure against another, each circle and each course being in itself good. Instead of an abstract or objective uniform visual code of conduct applicable to all situations, there is rather a multi-sensory equilibrium or balance of properties to be adjusted constantly. The ground must remain tuned.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Robotism is instant readjustment. Angolism, on the other hand, ensures a rigidity. of point of view, which is largely a consequence of linear and visual logic. It is best characterized as promoting confrontation and fragmentation. Some of the chief elements in the illusion of objectivity. One emphasizes the eye over the ear. The function of robotism is the reverse. As Lowell Thomas used to say,

Starting point is 00:31:41 on the air, you're everywhere. The robotic man is capable of instant adjustment to any social situation without guilt since he keeps his ear tuned to a collective, a moral identity which we call the audience, like the attentive crowd, an audience is tuned ground. That is something we should all try and understand a little bit more, is the ability for some cultures to turn on a dime and other cultures to be a slave to their linear and visual logic. If you just take a few minutes to think about this last little bit that we talked about,

Starting point is 00:32:35 I think it accurately portrays what's happening in our world today. the adversarial system of the West, which would be the analytical left brain. It's so great in so many ways, and it causes such critical thinking, and it helps us solve a lot of issues. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, I don't truly understand how either system can be correct.

Starting point is 00:33:16 And I think that's the point Marshall McLuhan is trying to make, is that we need to be working with both hemispheres of the brain. If you just have the left analytical side, then you're going to be promoting confrontation and fragmentation, which may be good in the short term, the confrontation, the battle of ideas, the best idea wins. That sounds great in theory until it gets to a point where neither side will give up. Both know my idea is better.

Starting point is 00:33:47 No, mine is. No, mine is. And then that is the point of fragmentation. And you can see it in the movements that we have today, whether it's Occupy Wall Street. And granted, there may be, in a lot of the big movements that tend to fragment, you often hear about how those groups were purposely fragmented by provocateurs. You know what I mean by that? Like someone in power will get into the group.

Starting point is 00:34:18 group and then subvert it. However, regardless if that's an organic process or if it is subversion, the process of fragmentation in the battle of ideas is cancerous. It takes away the ability for large groups to mobilize. And so that is the downfall of the left hemisphere. It can only take you so far before the logical conclusion is fragmentation. However, if you're going to go strictly on the right side and you can easily change from, we should kill all these people,

Starting point is 00:35:04 we're going to fight till the end? We should, remember the rape of Ninkan, Nanking, when the Japanese soldiers went in and just slaughtered and raped and pillaged all the Chinese people? Like, that's okay. And then the very next day, oh, we're sorry, our bad.

Starting point is 00:35:20 What do you mean to do that? But they genuinely mean it. In the West, we would look like, you don't mean that. You just fucking did that yesterday. You still hate all those people. You see, we can't comprehend the ability for a culture to turn on a dime and be like, okay, we think this, now we think that.

Starting point is 00:35:41 But why do you think that? Because our grand supreme religious dictator leader said it. if you think about you know if you think about the emperor of japan is he really that different than the emperor of north korea not really not in not in the western mind you could say one is a better person and leads his people better but to the western mind it's like yeah you're still under an emperor one of them if they're if they're if they're they are both from God. You know, whatever they're...

Starting point is 00:36:26 I don't know. It's probably... It probably sounds pretty ignorant for me because I don't truly understand the culture. However, it does seem like a valid point from the left hemisphere. They're both emperors.

Starting point is 00:36:43 One of them likes to starve their people and one of them likes chrysanthemums. That's very... That's silly. There's way more to it than that. I was trying to be funny there. So please don't take that out on me. Unless you want to, then I'd probably deserve it. Well, that's what I got for today, you guys.

Starting point is 00:37:00 It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure and an honor. It's been a pleasure honor. Hanging out with you guys today. I hope you have a brilliant Friday. I hope that you got something planned for the weekend that's going to make your life beautiful. I am hopeful, my friends,

Starting point is 00:37:20 that all of you fall like rays of sunshine through a series of openings inside a cave so that the darkness can be punctuated with beams of light. I should write that down. That's really pretty. And if you can do that, 99% of the time,

Starting point is 00:37:40 you will be successful in your relationships. See what I did there? Did the whole left brain, right brain, metaphor, analytical thing. Try it. It works. I love you. Have a great weekend.

TrueLife - Spotlight on Marshall McLuhan #5: Media, Society & the Global Brain

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